Gosh, that was a pretty long hiatus from the blog. It has been on my mind to sit and write. Life has taken over. With an upcoming exhibition and a million life things to do, my focus was everywhere but here. Writing this is centering. Reading has been confined to stints in the bathroom after the kids are asleep or after work is done. Subway reading is a luxury I treasure beyond words. All in all, I have been sloooooow.
As I promised in my last entry, I googled some artists in the book that I wanted to look up and see what they were doing now. There are some big names Lippard mentions. I stuck to the lesser known big shots.
David Chung: http://www.davidchung.com/
In the chapter called Mixing, Lippard covers some amazing artists whose work resonates loudly with current events in the US. It is almost a bit uncanny how much this chapter belongs to the here and now. Was Lippard on some sort of time machine when she wrote it and didn't realize it? I am sure that these artists are very well known by those much better versed when it comes to names. I must confess, that this was the first I heard of David Chung and I was impressed. It goes without saying that by the mere size of his canvases Chung is stationed in LA. Where else would he have the space to explore the pictorial plane with such dramatic line and gusto. His name attracted me. Having a history in Korea and returning there last year, the big boom of the Korean art world is dynamically impressive for me. There is so much ordered passion in the details of work by many Korean artists as well as in Chung's. His imagery is a symphony of graffiti and Korean motifs, northeast Asian symbols such as the crane, swooping above a tangle of monochromatic beams. His 1988 piece Seoul House” an electronic rap opera, was an early piece sited by Lippard. The video on his site is pretty good for showing the documentation of a live piece and left me wanting Chung to create more live pieces. He found a way to collaborate with ethnomusicologist Pooh Johnston and composer Charles Tobermann that mirrored the cross cultural identity the US carries within it. When so much media focus recently (albeit misinformed for the most part) on cross cultural relations, it is refreshing to see something smart, non-sensationalist, and dignified.
Larry Beck (Chnagmiut Yup'ik): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_James_Beck
I was disappointed to see this artist had passed away in 1994. The link above was the only more or less comprehensive link on him and his work I could find. He died in 1994, a few year after the publication on Mixed Blessings. He had a tremendous career working with Tom Robbins in performance collaborations with the Shazam Society (worth a good research paper if ever) and in his own rite with mighty sculpture. In his caption, he notes that he is an Eskimo but also a 20th Century American who lives in a modern city with junk yards, industrial waste, trash cans that float on the shores of ancient beaches where his ancestors found driftwood. His pieces involve using modern found objects to create masks influenced by traditional old Inuit art. They are as amusing as they are poignant. As I was reading his bio on wikipedia, I read a sentence that struck me: “He experimented with casting several small masks, based on traditional Inuit forms, in aluminum and bronze, but he was still uncomfortable with the fact that the masks represented a complete contradiction to his western art training. This and peer group pressure kept him doing abstract work.” Reading this sentience reminded me of an interview I heard on WBAI with Ellen Lupton on her new book about indie publishing companies. In her interview she mentioned that the business of publishing is based on keeping people out because there is so much money involved with publishing a new author that it is really an economic risk. Is art's aesthetic based on financial risk thus affecting our interests, judgments, and choices? Beck deserves a retrospective in a major way. But who will do it? With any luck a museum devoted to Native American Arts will do so, but what about the bigger institutions like the Guggenheim, LAMOCA, Gettysburg, etc.? Will they take the chance and re-program the aesthetic?
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/chaTheresa.php
A tragic end like that of Ana Mendieta, Cha died at a point in her career where she was hitting incredible momentum. Her book “Dictee” is already on my list of to buy after I finish this project. I want to devote more time researching her work. Her work is contemporary to Mendieta. Their work both transcends from the material to the another plane that is universal. Both begin from the female and from there invest their energies into transcending limits within materials. I had heard of Cha before this book, but to be honest had not seen any of her work and only heard of her fame and tragic death. Her work is simple but deceptive in leading us to think that it's core is not complex. She had a retrospective that traveled to Spain organized by UC Berkley according to La Fundacio Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. There is a foundation under her name with images and documentation on her work.
I think I am going to devote one more entry to Lippard. The bookcase has to move forward. I don't know if I am going to use a first strike for this book. I feel as if I'm committing heresy just thinking about doing this let alone it being a Lucy Lippard book, but the project must move forward and at this pace, I don't want my audience to forget about me. So here's a deadline I'm sticking with: August 17. The week before is going to be filled with opening exhibition jitters and work. New live art piece. Exciting!
